Michael Lugnegard - InterviewWhat is your passion? What motivates you? Under which circumstance do you
develop the most and perform the best? Where do you want to be in five years?
Michael tells us what motivates him.

Mark Randall, Marker Rendering
In this tutorial, Mark will show us a sketch rendering using traditional
markers and pastels. Sometimes its good to take a step back and have a more
“hands on approach” to a sketch!

…or if you don’t know when to stop
you can do something like this. I’ve applied the classic Lotus ‘Type 49’
livery (hence the gold wheels) by marking out portions of the bodywork and
altering the Hue/Saturation/Lightness. I’ve also deleted the Grain Filter on
the background floor and replaced it with a reflection of the car. For this,
copy and paste the car, flip vertically and reduce the opacity of the layer
to about 8%. That’s it, move on to the next sketch.

Now it's
time to bring the sketch into Photoshop ( I use CS 2). I use a very budget
CanonScan Lide 30, and it works very good (slow though). Since the scanner
is in A4 format, I need to scan the image in two parts and assemble them in
CS.
The first thing I do when that's done is to adjust the Levels (Ctrl+L) to
get a nice, bright and white background. Then I tune up the darker levels to
get some contrast.

One thing
that is really difficult to do good is wheels. I don't put much effort into
mine at the moment since I know we will go digital later on.

I continue
to work the sketch with more reflections until I fell OK with it. Sketching
cars in kind of different. You need to understand the car to sketch it,
cause there is so many details that makes it a car.

How about door panel/car body reflections?
Let's begin by shading the whole area lightly. Then we can draw some
“templates” for how we want the different reflections to play on the
surface. This can be a bit difficult to do. You need to “feel” the
reflections, and there is no template for how to do this.

To create depth in the image, the darkest
value should be closest to the “camera” and the further away the less
contrast. To achieve this, I fill the air-intake with black, give the
headlamp a lot of contrast, scribble some value into the tire area, just
beginning to work the front and putting less effort into the rear.
One area in particular that is very important is the greenhouse. The glass acts like sort of a mirror. Remember,
that on transparent surfaces, the shade above the horizon usually is close
to opaque and what's beneath more transparent.

Next step is to start indicating reflections
and thereby describing the material and form. At first, this is done very
light, so I can take a step backward in case it doesn't look right.
When I'm happy with the reflection pattern I begin to work the lines and do
some tight 45 degree lines. The lines are instead of marker work, and have the same purpose, to
add value and readability.

The next step is to trace and refine the
original. For
those of you that use Vellum, this won't be a problem.
The tracing part can be a bit cumbersome, and some of you just might skip it
and sketch out the design straight away. When doing car design, it's all
about the right curves, the right proportions. Therefore I usually sketch
very rough sketches in the beginning, just to find the right tension between
curves, folds, feature-lines etc. These roughs can then be made “readable”
by overlaying and refinement. That's the process I will take you through
now.

Before we begin tracing the initial sketch
let's look at the materials we will be using. I will sketch on normal Xerox Colortech+, a very nice copy-paper.
I will be using three types of pencils. A black Verithin (king of sketch
pens), a black Prismacolor, for adding lineweight and shading, and my
favourite ball-point, a black Pilot Super Grip, Fine (awesome on vellum)

Since this will be kind of a semi-rendering I
prefer to have most of the design nailed before I start. I begin by making a
very fast, 10 minutes at the most, ink sketch with a Copic Multi Liner
Brush-M. With this first sketch I try to get the lines and proportions that
I want. I also make fast lines to indicate where the reflections will be
falling, just as a guide for the coming rendering.

Car designers usually sketch the wheels way to big, just to give the car the
right presence. Big rims and wheels just look good, it may be a harsh and
bumpy road, but that's the price to pay for beauty ;)) My wheels are too
small, so I copy the wheel area, and enlarge them using the Free transform
tool.

How do I
know where to draw the reflections, and how to arrange them next to each
other? The answer is simple but still not. Observe reality - recreate –
mimic - understand - observe more - interpretate – render more. This takes
time to learn, and shouldn't be rushed. Don't just copy other sketches. They
might not have done it right, and you won't really know why to put lines and
value in certain places. It's much better to work from photos and memory.

By the way, this sketch comes from a real project. For this project, I
choose not to sketch in a very dramatic car-like way, with a lot of
perspective distortion, and extreme angles, not a traditional car sketch in
other words. This will be a very honest sketch. It's not made to be
eye-candy or to persuade the design-boss. It's made to tell the client about
a design proposal.

When I trace I'm very light on the hand, just indicating the linework. I try
not to work the lines to much, instead I do the lines with as few strokes as
possible.
When the main curves are set, I use shipcurves to give them some really
beautiful lineweight.
It not necessary to do all the curves at once, I usually do this bit by bit.

I will begin by introducing myself. My name is Mikael Lugnegård and I'm a
Swedish designer, currently working in the automotive industry. I'm 27
years old and I love my work. Design is my passion, no doubt. If you feel
like reading more about me, my journey and my take on design, please read
this article. After that you can also take a look at my new web site, www.daylightproduction.se

When Allan approached me about writing a tutorial for his website, we both
agreed that it would be nice with something that wasn't completely focused
around a digital technique. There's a lot of great tutorials on how to use
Photoshop in a successful way, so that won't be my focus. I will however do
some digital touch-up on the final sketch in CS, but 95% of the work will be
old school.

In my opinion, to communicate ideas, you need to master a few different
skills. One of these is to draw, with pen and paper. This is a fundamental
skill you need to master. REALLY. Consider one of the following scenarios.
You're in a client meeting, and you need to sketch down an idea to show your
client what you're thinking. The sketch you looks like something a 5-year
old has done. This doesn't evoke trust, the most important thing in a
business relationship. You get my point. Imagine how satisfying is would
be to nail that fast and dynamic sketch in front of your client with only a
ballpoint pen!!!

At most design schools they teach you how to use a single wooden pencil to
create an entire rendering, sometimes referred to as a “Prisma-rendering”
due to the type of pencil usually used (Prismacolor wood pencils).
These are fast and very pretty looking techniques, and they are fairly easy
to master.
This will be more of a walkthrough then a tutorial in the sense that I won't
describe every pen stroke, more the basic steps and thoughts behind.
Ok, let's go!